It's not difficult

I worked at Nildram back in 2000-2001 and we were punting out Zyxel routers to customers as a replacement to the original Stingrays.

Myself and a second-line technician were tasked with writing some software to preconfigure the routers with the connection details, and to make some other tweaks, so that the provisioning ladies could plug it in, run a script, box it up and ship it out.

One of the first things we baked into the script was to change the default router password. Admittedly, to the same as their connection password but it was still not the default...

Off topic...

...but I do giggle to myself when I can read the intelligent, thought-inspiring comments on a Reg thread, swipe straight past anything that is headed with “bombastic bob” and see just a few milliseconds glimpse of his/hers downvotes before I read then next post.

Any reason that despite trying two computers via three different browsers on each, two completely disparate VPN's and two different internet connections, that the feed to the Periscope video keeps cutting off approximately every few minutes but immediately restarts when attempted (ie, therefore no network problems causing the disconnection)?

Re: Really?

And whilst I would probably agree with you based on my limited knowledge of fail2ban, instead of being AC and also a condescending twat, would you like to point out some helpful information about the subject for the rest of us not blessed with your clearly god-like wisdom?

Re: Windows everywhere

Oh reign it in for [deity]'s sake. Once your beloved Linux or MacOS (read: Linux) becomes the overwhelmingly popular OS that you want it to be, "hackers" and malware/virus writers will shift their attention to it and then it will be just as targeted and insecure as Windows. If you think all Linux code is perfect and bulletproof then you are living in a dream world.

I agree that Windows has its security issues and they are well documented, but this article is about the software requiring out of date and therefore inherently insecure versions of components. Not really anything to do with Windows per se.

Erm...

Re: And all completely irrelevant to us right-pondians...

I've always wondered what would happen in the following theoretical situation:

I have an encrypted file with loads of important stuff in - important enough for me to want to secure it heavily.

To secure it, I type a fairly long passphrase. I then call my friend in another country and ask them to remote to my machine and then type their long passphrase on the end of mine. The file is encrypted.

For whatever reason, plod decides that they want the contents of that file. They arrest me, and I type in my half of the key. I then inform them that the rest of it is unknown to me and give them the details of my friend, who promptly refuses to divulge the key.

Being in another country, plod doesn't have jurisdiction to force my friend to give their portion.

Would they still (legally) be able to lock me up, as I have given them the password as far as I know?